August 28th, 2005

WOW! Dave Lucking (the band related links work if you’re on the list and signed in to the site) and Cookie Ostrom did an amazing job! Saturday was the St. Lawrence Band Reunion. Great turnout, standing room only in the church basement. Tim and Paul McGovern had put together CD’s and videos of collections of photos and Super 8 movies which were running non-stop in two classrooms, there were scrapbooks and photos from several generations. Tim made awards for all the Directors, I had a great shot of him presenting to Doug Jarosh and deleted it — oops — and same with the one where he introduced his mother, Pat McGovern. SORRY!

Talk about long strange trips… it was so weird hearing over and over “Oh, I joined the band in 1948” or “1952” and here they are:

No one could really claim any generation gap when the photos of the first New York trip look just like the photos of the 1972 New York trip, same antics, same poses, and what a hoot to learn that my in-laws first got together on one of those trips!

Here’s Hap Corbett telling of his St. Lawrence adventures, and Clete McGovern, Director for many years (and my father-in-law!), sitting on the left.

Clete was a big influence on me. He taught me some of the finer points of argument, which has served me well. He had to chortle, and said he’d heard I was a lawyer and asked me what I was up to. When I told him, he said, “I hope you’re not saving the screeching owl!” I explained my economic approach to utility regulation issues, and that he’d probably get a kick out of it, and he said, “Well, we probably wouldn’t agree on much, I am conservative, you know.”

As Tim McGovern said, it was an organization that welcomed everyone as family, and he’d not found anything like it since. But for him it WAS family — he needed more than just two hands as he listed off just his immediate family members in the band! It was a family reunion for me, too. I recognized them all except for “baby Tommy” who was maybe a year and a half when we met, and now has kids of his own. Here’s moi and my mother-in-law Pat McGovern, and favorite sister-in-law Peggy Roethke (McGovern).

Oh, my, some of those old photos, as someone said, “That’s back from the days when you were hot!” His brother almost smacked him upside the head… should have… I don’t remember those days well, seems my floppy crashed somewhere along the parade route… we all know that sax player… and who’s that with the red hair in front?

And guess who this is, photo compliments of Jan Fennell (Shupien)? Isn’t that the same guy on bass drum above?

And also from Jan Fennell, this one’s for David, back when he had hair and wasn’t pregnant! That’ll teach you not to show up!

July 20th, 2005

St. Lawrence Band Reunion
Saturday, August 27, 2005
1-6 and even later…
St. Lawrence School in SE Mpls

Paul McGovern found it — one of the photos I remember from the last time Saturn moved from Cancer into Leo! I keep wanting to call him “Pauly,” that’s him on the right in front of the banner. He’s grown up a bit, now he’s in photographic engineering, will have a new kid next month, and he’s lending his talents to restoring and digitalizing photos from so far back that we don’t even want to remember. Maybe he thinks blackmail will get him through this lay-off, I think he said something under his breath about photos of me in the back of the bus… don’t know how much this is gonna cost me…

And my exhusband’s the one with the trombone next to my little bro! Let’s hear it for Saturn leaving Cancer and revisiting another era with a little perspective!

They’re starting to come out of the woodwork — this week I’ve heard from a bunch of people who were in the band a generation or two before me. And more than a few “Is that YOU?” like the blast out of nordeast from Jan Shupien and then from Kris Fix, they were former roommates at the “Como Zoo;” and I found Susan Gecas (Koob) at the GunFlint Tavern in Grand Marais; her sister Sandra Koob who runs C&S Horse Boarding in Brooksville, Florida; Randy Ottoson was the first to pass on the info on this, he’s now a nurse for Hennepin County; PJ Belvedere, brother of my friend Jo Belvedere who is doing strange things with Mississippi River Mollusks (couldn’t find anything on PJ, but they call his father Paul “one of the fathers of posterior composites!); we sure can’t forget Kelly Doran for U.S. Senate, and of course my little bro’ David Overland now at the Islander RV Resort in Lake Havasu, AZ! And the computer lit up with missives from my brother-in-law Paul McGovern, out in Washington state, who’s about to have his third kid and just got laid off after 15 years (openings in photographic engineering, leave a comment here!), and Peggy McGovern, whose husband just retired from the Navy, and are now first time homeowners up in Forest Lake, closer to family, well, anywhere in the country would be near one sibling or another, closer to more of her family.

June 18th, 2005

The St. Lawrence Band is having a reunion. You haven’t lived until you’ve had to play saxophone while doing the foxtrot in a wool uniform in Minnesota humidity (grateful with every step that I didn’t play tuba, despite Tim McGovern’s seemingly effortless piroettes with his). I think enduring that, and selling Camp Fire candy door to door, gave me the attitude I need to do my work today! Here I am with my first saxophone (took another decade to get my Selmer VI) freezing to death before the St. Patricks Day Parade thirty-some years ago.

That’s the afore-mentioned Randy Ottoson on my immediate right with the snare drum, and none other than Kelly Doran for US Senate on my far left with the snare drum! For a long time, St. Lawrence and Sabathani were tied as the best marching bands in the state. Every summer, we spent weekends in a bus touring Minnesota, from Corn on the Curb to St. Patrick’s Day to the Aquatennial to Forest Lake. My father-in-law, Clete McGovern, ran the band when I was in it, mother-in-law Pat had been a fire baton twirler in the Aqua Follies — their family alone filled up 2-3 rows!

There’s about 500 members they’re tracking down, so if you were part of the St. Lawrence Band and haven’t heard a peep, here’s the poop. Mark your calendar: